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Enoch had been seen or heard, and Halpen feared what was the fact that one of his enemies was striving to overtake him. Enoch flung himself forward in the water and with a strong overhand stroke took a diagonal course to intercept the canoe. He could see the man bending to his paddle. Every stroke of the blade sent the phosphorescent water flying about the frail bark.
"Well, lad, mainly that Jonas Harding, who was as quick on the trail and as good a woodsman as myself, should be worsted by a mad buck; it seems downright impossible, Nuck." "I know. But there could be no mistake about it, 'Siah. There were the hoof-marks and there was no bullet wound on the body, only those gashes made by the critter's horns. Simon Halpen " Bolderwood raised his hand quickly.
He did not recognize his own voice, but Halpen heard him plainly and was impressed with his earnestness. He stopped suddenly, half raising his own gun. "Don't do that!" cried Enoch, instantly. "Keep your gun down. Why, I have but to press this trigger and you will drop where you are! Be warned." "Hi, captain," growled one of his supporters, "the little varmint means it. Have a care."
And if such a thing should happen I would shoot you down 'deed and I would!" This warning cooled the man's ardor somewhat. For a full minute he stood silent eyeing Enoch from under his shaggy brows. "Would you dare flout me to my face?" he demanded. "I dare keep my rights here, Master Halpen, as my father did before me," said Enoch, his voice trembling for the first time.
This brute would have been perfectly able to kill a man. Naught but the hoof-marks of the deer were found about the body of his father. How, then, could Simon Halpen be in any wise guilty of his enemy's death? But Crow Wing brought the white youth to a realization of present things. The Indian knew that their hunting was over for that night.
Hurrying from the vicinity, dress and hands covered with blood as Crow Wing had seen him, Halpen had hidden the deer hoofs in the hollow of the tree, and escaped to Albany, his vengeance accomplished. "But he shall suffer for this yet," thought the youth, with compressed lips. "God will punish him if the courts do not. And sometime he may be delivered into my hand, and if he is "
And in the flash of torchlight which was an instant later cast upon the scene, the startled boy recognized the dark features and hawk nose of Simon Halpen. The villain had sought him out and had striven to pay off old scores in that moment of confusion and uproar. But the confusion helped Enoch to escape, too. Lot seized his shoulder and dragged him up from his knees.
But Allen caught at the matter instantly, and understood to whom Bolderwood referred by his appellation of "the serpent." "You mean to say you've got Simon Halpen?" he asked. "That's the identical sarpint, Colonel," declared the ranger. "We caught him tryin' ter cross to Old Ti and thought it was best, under the sarcumstances, ter keep him close till this leetle business is over.
But suddenly a hand and arm rose from the lake and seized the paddle just back of the blade. Enoch had dived under the surface and come up beside the canoe as Halpen was speeding past. "Ha! would you do it?" gasped the spy, striving to tear the paddle from the youth's grasp. The canoe rocked dangerously. The man flung himself to the other side and his superior strength wrenched the paddle away.
The youth remembered how Simon Halpen looked a few weeks before when he saw him at Westminster, and this pretty well described the scoundrel. Halpen was in the Grants or had been recently.
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